Zardari to meet British investigators

KARACHI: Pakistan People's Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari will meet the British investigators on Tuesday probing his wife Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

However, the party has ruled out any meeting between Zardari and President Pervez Musharraf.

Zardari, who has decided to confine himself to Bhutto's ancestral village of Naudero for the 40-day period of mourning declared by the PPP, arrived late last night to meet the British High Commissioner and members of the Scotland Yard team.

"The meeting is being held in Karachi because the British officials were not able to get permission or security clearance from the government of Pakistan to travel to Naudero," PPP spokesperson Sherry Rehman said.

Rehman rejected the reports that Zardari would meet Musharraf, who is also in Karachi, as 'disinformation and baseless speculation'.

The PPP is committed to 'the demand for a wider international probe into the events that led up to' the assassination of Bhutto and will 'continue to seek a UN-led inquiry into the sponsors, organisers, financiers and perpetrators behind' her murder, Rehman said.

"Benazir Bhutto was a leader of international stature. Her assassination represents an attack on the stability and federal structure of Pakistan. It represents an attack on the politics of peace and democracy for the entire region, and the forces that conspired to kill her are the same forces that seek the destruction of Pakistan, which poses a clear and present danger for the region," she said.

The PPP will use all its resources to seek a UN-led independent probe and to bring the culprits and the 'hidden hands' behind the assassination to justice, Rehman added.